The scientific and intellectual developments of the 17th century – the discoveries of Newton, rationalism of Descartes, the skepticism of Bayle, and the empiricism of Francis Bacon and John Lock fastened the belief in natural law and universal order and the confidence in human reason that spread to influence all of the eighteenth century. This powerful stream of thought is known as the Enlightenment.

Currents of thought were many and varied, but certain ideas may be characterized as pervading and dominant. A rational and scientific approach to religious, social, political and economic issues prompted a secular view of the world and a general sense of progress and perfectibility.

The Enlightenment represented alternative approaches to modernity, alternative habits of mind and heart, of conscience and sensibility. The major champions of these concepts were the philosophers, who popularized and promulgated the new ideas for the general reading public.

These proponents of the Enlightenment shared certain basic attitudes. With supreme faith in rationality, they sought to discover and to act upon universally valid principles governing humanity, nature and society. They variously attacked spiritual and scientific authority, dogmatism, intolerance, censorship, and economic and social restraints. They considered the state the proper and rational instrument of progress. The extreme rationalism and skepticism of the age led to deism.

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Centered in Paris, the movement gained international character at cosmopolitan salons. Masonic lodges played an important role in disseminating the new ideas throughout Europe. Foremost in France among proponents of the Enlightenment were Montesquieu, Voltaire, Turgot and Physiocrats and Jeans Jacques Rousseau.

That Enlightenment represented alternative approaches to modernity, and alternative habits of mind and heart can be analysed by discussing the ideas of proponents of the Enlightenment. Voltaire moved easily in aristocratic circles. He opposed tyranny and dogma, but he had no ration of reinventing democracy.

He had for too little in ordinary person for that. What he did think was that educated and sophisticated persons could be brought to see through the exercise of their reason that the world could and should be greatly improved. His slogan was crushing the infamous.

Rousseau was another leading figure of Enlightenment. He believed that the people are naturally good but are corrupted by society’s false values. He was against the limitations of a civilized society, and he advised a return to nature. He also developed the idea of general will, and argued that conformity with it had to be guiding principle of the government. Essentially, concerned with notion of freedom, Rousseau began his masterpiece the Social Contract (1762) with the words ‘man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.’

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He argued that people sacrifice their rights in return for protection by a head of state. Rousseau challenged the idea of absolute monarchy, and the tradition that the nobility and clergy were entitled to special privileges. He also had the opinion that education should be available to everyone; Rousseau’s ideas were an important influence on Romanticism and on the French Revolution. His writings began to influence political events and inspired revolutions in France and North America. Slavery had no place in these nations formed to protect human rights.

Rousseau also inspired people to fight for freedom on behalf of others who were unable to help themselves. Politicians, churches, and ordinary people began to think how they might help slaves.

Rousseau’s ideas on education are outlined in “Entile”. His ideal here was rejection of the traditional ideal. Education was not seen to be imparting of all things known to the uncouth child, rather it was seen as the drawing out of what is already there, and the fostering of what is native. Rousseau’s educational proposal is highly artificial, the process is carefully timed and controlled, but with the end of allowing the free development of human potential.

Complicated in thought but simple in lifestyle, Kant wrote on a broad range of subjects from metaphysics to physics- from theology to philosophy. In his critique of Pure Reason (1781), Kant agreed with Hume’s empiricism- namely that sense- experience is essential to human knowledge. But he also agreed with continental rationalist that knowledge is also a matter of exercise of human reason -in particular that the use of innate human ideas which help us to recognize this empirical information.

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Thus, Kant saw himself as closing the intellectual gap between the British empiricists and the continental rationalists. Kant also saw himself as answering Hume’s skepticism about ever knowing with any degree of certainty the truth of transcendent ideas such as moral laws or ethical principles. In Kant’s “Metaphysics of Morals and Critique of Practical Reason”, he proposed a new mortal/ethical “categorical imperative”, one that did not require the existence of God for its validity.

And yet Kant’s concept was of a definite transcendent nature, one with absolute universal validity. It involved an ingenious piece of moral logic; we ought to act in such a way that our act would become accepted as a universal principle of behaviour. If it were not able to attain such a universal validity then that action by practical reason was obviously not to be pursued.

Taking his logic of practical reason a step further, he turned to the issue of the existence of God. He agreed with Hume that no rational argument could be given for God’s existence but practical reason could. Kant claimed that human reason cannot establish the fact of God. But in observing the moral instincts of people, we can see through the eyes of faith that there is some kind of source beyond the mere human will itself that directs life that higher moral grounding is by definition God.

Thus, God exists; this king of theological reasoning did not impress the Prussian government. Finally, so impressed was Kant that we humans could live in accordance with such higher moral imperatives that in his “Perpetual Peace”, he laid out a vision for a new world order. The impact of Kantian’s work has been incalculable. Besides giving impetus to the development of Herman idealism, Kant’s philosophy has influenced almost every area of thought.

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Today the Enlightenment is often viewed as a historical anomaly, a brief movement when a number of thinkers infatuated with reason vainly supposed that the perfect society could be built on common sense and tolerance, a fantasy which collapsed with the triumphal sweep of Romanticism. However, the Enlightenment by promoting alternative ways of modernity, sense and sensibility laid firm ideological foundations on which much of our present world order rests and works.